Fierce Kingdom

She cannot think of such things and still function, and she has needed to function, and she has never wanted to be one of those women who won't let their children eat raw cookie dough or wander a block down the street without a chaperone, and you have to manage the terror or you can never watch your child walk out the front door. And here they are where death is shoving its bloody snout in their faces, and she has not considered it, not really, because she has some vague idea of what she will unleash if she does, the great gaping chasm that will open up. That is what you do when you have a child, isn't it, open yourself up to unimaginable pain and then try to pretend away the possibilities.

A considerable part of parenting is pretending moods that you do not entirely feel.

She doesn’t picture them as Arabic—she has been wondering, of course. But they do not sound like that kind of terrorist. They sound like young, obnoxious white men—aren’t they always young white men?—and she is not sure whether this makes them more or less dangerous than fanatics on a jihad.

With a lover you might have a perfect comfort with each other’s body, a sense that his body belongs to you and yours to him, and you might have total unselfconscious freedom to put a hand on his thigh, to put your mouth on his in the way you know he likes best, for him to curl around you in bed, pelvis to pelvis—but the two of you are still, ultimately, two different bodies, and the pleasure comes from the difference.

That is what you do when you have a child, isn’t it, open yourself up to unimaginable pain and then try to pretend away the possibilities.

She inhales slow and long. The tremors have stopped. She is still and solid and ready, a thing carved for a purpose.

Such a system of checks and balances -- parenting -- of projections and guesswork and cost-benefit ratios.

You cannot know a wild thing.

Such a system of clocks and balances - parenting - of projections and guesswork and cost-benefit ratios.

I don’t really know how Dr. Doom feels about scarves,” she says.

With Lincoln, the line between their two selves is blurred. She bathes him and wipes off every bodily fluid, and he sticks his fingers in her mouth or catches his balance with a hand on the top of her head. He catalogues her freckles and moles as carefully as he keeps track of his own scrapes and bruises. He does not quite know that he is a being apart from her. Not yet. For now, her arm is as accessible as his arm—her limbs are equally his limbs. They are interchangeable.

I just want to know if a sound can create a boy. Or, if a woman becomes a mother when she thinks she hears a baby crying for her. —ELIZABETH HUGHEY “QUESTIONS FOR EMILY